“By the way, Mr. Moisuk, how’d you meet Faye?”
He seemed to genuinely have to think about that one. “Well... actually David introduced us.”
“Talk to you soon, Mr. Moisuk.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
After calling Gina to let her know I was at Zucca’s, I sat alone at a table near the ‘Roman Buffet’. I sipped my favorite and stared at the purple ceiling as I put together the jigsaw pieces that John Moisuk was too blind to see. There was something more afoot than a back alley dalliance. I figured I might be able to find out quickly depending on what Mrs. Moisuk was made of.
Before I could congratulate myself on having a plan, a steel grip pinched the muscle by my neck. Electricity shot all the way to my knee. My hand reflexed towards my roscoe. “That’ll be the last move you ever make, Jarhead.” Dan side-shuffled and managed to gain the seat opposite me.
“Hey, LOOOO-tenant, you’re gettin pretty sneaky in your old age.” He lit a Camel and pointed his chin at my glass.
“Whatchu drinkin?”
I raised my hand and the aproned waiter toed the mark. Thank God, no Groucho that day. We enjoyed the amber liquid then assaulted the buffet. We returned to the table with our plates piled high.
“Rita Mae told me you were playing basketball last night. I swear that gal gets better looking every time I see her.”
Dan leaned forward on the table and pointed his clenched fork at me. “Listen up, Knuckle-dragger, keep yer mitts off the help.”
‘Little late for that, Dan, me boy. Just hope you don’t dust her for prints’.
What I said was, “So, how’d the basketball go, Dan?”
“We had fun. Not enough showed up, so we played three on three. I, personally, kicked some ass. Hey, I saw Sekach at the 33rd Precinct in the Bronx yesterday. Said to say hey if I saw you. Can you believe he’s buckin for a gold shield already?”
“That’s good. He’s solid.”
Dan reached in his coat and slid an envelope across the table to me. I just pushed it into my inside pocket. I could tell by the feel, it wasn’t a check. It was an eighth inch thick. That prodded me to bring up the subject on my mind.
“Dan, what’s your take on the whirlwind string of events with the bent noses last week - Crazy Joe Gallo being made head of one of the Families?”
“I don’t know that there was a string of events. Shit just happens.”
“Well, more specifically, seems like Gallo could be tagged with Spillazzo’s murder pretty easy.”
“Okay, Woody, I see where you’re going with this. I know it’s hard to understand, and I don’t like it myself. The suits downtown are real happy to see Gallo replace Rossi. Rossi was unpredictable and didn’t know boundaries, but he was slippery. We pushed hard to get him, but, in the end, it took his own people to take him out. Ya know, the fact that Gallo opposes drug trafficking just about puts him on the Mayor’s Christmas card list.” Dan smiled, but there was no humor in it.
I ate my lasagna quietly for a while. I was squeezing my brain. How could I get a toehold on the Gallo long con? The gumbah played the system and convinced the mob to wipe out his competition.
The members of the system were smiling like rats eating cheese. They seemed oblivious to Crazy Joe’s scheme. They were literally letting him get away with murder. Made my head hurt. Guess I could’ve just walked away from it, too - if Gallo hadn’t been leaning on me.
“Look, Dan, after Gallo suddenly rose to such prominence, something seemed hinkey to me about the whole mess. I got hold of that red headed dame’s address. She lives plenty good out in Far Rockaway. I stopped by yesterday and put her under the bulb.” Not exactly the truth, but close. Logan was now staring at me.
“I thought she was another Rossi victim. Now she sizes up as a worker who’s been with Joe Gallo for years. She hinted that Gallo might want me to work for him. She didn’t seem to mind peaching on Gallo to me, but who knows what she was prepped to say.”
“That’s the Margolies dame, right? Doesn’t surprise me. She came around for a long time trying to get information on her father’s murder.”
“Dan, Joe Gallo told her to hang around the DA’s Office to stir things up against Vito Rossi - sobbing daughter picking the scab off the wound.” He pulled a forkful of meatball back from his mouth.
“Nice analogy, Farm Boy. Look… again, so what? I had her pegged for ulterior motives way back then. Hell, she barely knew her father, and then suddenly she’s the grieving daughter. She didn’t much matter then, and she doesn’t matter now. You need to focus and learn to take ‘yes’ for an answer. Everything turned out fine. I know that because I don’t have the DA crawling up my ass.” He ate the meatball.
“Well, I got a Chinese angle on this thing - Gallo, over a period of weeks, months or years orchestrated his own rise to power.”
Dan raised one eyebrow. “Ain’t that what everybody tries to do?”
Shit! There was some logic. That scootch, Gallo, was playing salugi with the DA’s Office and nobody seemed to give a damn. I raised my arm and indicated for the waiter to hit us with two more double Jacks. I lit a Lucky and actually started wondering if I’d seen the inside of a con and was taking it too personally. One thing was for sure, a threat on my life was plenty personal. Gallo wasn’t getting finsies from me.
“Didja hear about the Fitzpatrick suicide?” Logan asked softly.
My eyes snapped up. “You don’t mean the fat hotel dick at the George Washington?”
“Exactly. They found him in his office yesterday morning. He ate his gun. He was slumped over his desk with the .38 still stuck in his mouth.”
“That rummy was a Sad Sack, but I didn’t have him pegged as suicidal. Dan, I’d sure like to know if he had any other bruising on him. Can you have Rita Mae get me the coroner’s report?”
“Yeah, call her. Tell her I said so.”
As far as I knew, only Gallo and I knew that Fitzpatrick had removed Spillazo’s tongue from the crime scene. Looks like Crazy Joe was already tying up loose ends. I wondered how much of a loose end he thought I was.
I decided not to tell Dan about the note on my office door just yet. No particular reason except I had been in situations where a little extra knowledge pulled my bacon out of the fire when neither love nor money would have served.
If I had to put it into a hard thought, I guess I would’ve said Dan represented the law, but I represented justice. What was justification for ‘Justice’ could easily look like motive to the ‘Law’. It made me chuckle to think of it that way.
“What’s so funny?” Dan halted another half a meatball in midair.
“Nothing. It’s just something my secretary said.” ‘At least, I think she said it.’
“Say, you two an item?”
“Shit, Dan, she’s like a sister to me. Crissakes! She’s Ed Kowalski’s sister.”
Dan looked up at me from under both eyebrows, “Uh-huh.”
That evening, I made a speed run to the Bronx. I bought two lightweight wool suits at Sears Roebuck, one blue, one brown. $97.00 - that’s with an extra pair of pants. I dropped them off at Freddy Wong’s Tailor Shop and went next door and had a Number Seven and a couple of Pabsts.
I was lying in bed that night when it hit me like a falling piano. The last piece of the Moisuk jigsaw puzzle exploded into place. I needed to talk to Mrs. Faye Moisuk, and I needed to do it soon.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
(Wednesday, June 22, 1960.)
I was pushing back the gold and black painted name on my office door by eight a.m. I’d been getting so much sleep, energy oozed out of my pores. I went directly to my office and tossed Dan’s envelope in my lower desk drawer, locked it and slipped the key back behind my collection of Jim Thompson books. I shucked off my jacket and cranked out three sets with my trusty dumbbell.
I called Rita Mae Riley and relayed Logan’s message that she should get me a copy of the Coroner’s Report on Sean Fitzpatrick, former employee of
the George Washington Hotel. I told her I would stop by later. I almost asked what she was wearing that day. I left myself a note on my desk pad: ‘Dupree?’.
I scribbled a note on Gina’s desk notepad for her to make a bank deposit - check my shirt drawer. I’d be on the Moisuk thing. I was back in the Hawk before the hood had cooled down.
The Moisuks owned a sixth floor apartment on Ocean Avenue in Flatbush, posh neighborhood, old money.
Flatbush pissed me off every time I thought of the name. Four months earlier, they started tearing down Ebbets Field, home to the Brooklyn Dodgers for over forty years. Mike Sekach and I were in the stands when the ‘Bums’ won the 1955 World Series. Sekach won four tickets to the Series from a police raffle and gave two of them to his parents.
The ‘ticket package’ included a pre-game visit to the broadcast booth. We were ushered up and introduced to Vin Scully. He’d been calling radio and television play-by-play for the Dodgers since 1950. In 1953, at age twenty-five, he became the principal announcer. He was the Voice of the Dodgers.
Ebbets Field was small, run down and had little parking, but it was baseball history. After the City ran the Dodgers off to the West Coast in ’57, it was useless. Seemed somebody thought another set of apartment buildings was more important.
The Moisuk apartment building was impressive from the outside and it overlooked Prospect Park. Inside, it had the dark, smudgy elegance of the 1890’s - frozen in time. I guess I was expecting to meet a hot ticket as I rode the elevator to the top floor.
Mrs. Faye Moisuk, who answered my bell wearing a loose fitting housedress, was no femme fatale. She was about twenty-eight, maybe thirty. It’s not that she was unattractive, she was... dowdy. She had made plain into an art form. I explained that I did work for the DA’s Office (no lie so far), and I needed a few minutes of her time.
“Is John okay?”
“No, no, he’s fine. If I could just come in, there’s a matter I need to discuss with you.”
She pushed the eight foot door closed behind us and led me to the living room. Nice gams. The curves were obviously there. Tomski’s illicit massaging hadn’t harmed the picture of her walking away. She offered me a seat and I chose a side chair. She sat on the couch. I dragged my chair some four feet in front of her and sat down. I thought I might as well get the intimidation underway. I let my hat drop to the floor.
“Why did you ask if John is okay?”
“John’s my husband. He was my first thought. He just left for work two hours ago.” She spoke rapidly.
“How long have you been married?”
“About a year.” Her eyes were already darting.
“How’d you two meet?”
“I- uh- I don’t remember.” Darting and blinking, this twirl was shaping up to be a songbird.
“Well, Faye - you don’t mind if I call you Faye - Faye, I think you do remember. Your husband’s business partner, David Tomski, introduced you two.”
“Uh, maybe...”
“No maybe about it, Faye. You know how I know? NYPD picked up David Tomski at three o’clock this morning while he was playing cards at Dominic’s. He was charged with conspiracy to commit murder. After a couple a’ hours at the Brooklyn Substation, he was singing like a canary - said he’s a respectable businessman and he ain’t going up the river for no dame. He says you talked him into a plan to ice your husband, John, for his insurance. He wants a deal to testify.”
“What’s this all about?” She was circling the bait.
“You know he’s got a police record?” I was zeroing in. “The DA’s got him pegged as a lowlife. My coming here is your one chance to tell your side of it before they come and put the iron bracelets on you.” I leaned forward in my chair.
“Feh! That rat bastard,” she spat. “It was all his plan. Me marry the wimpy schmuck so I get half the hardware when David pushed him off the building. So, I’m sleeping with the schlemiel, waiting around for a year. David don’t do bupkes except schlep around here dipping his wick whenever he wants to.”
I moved to the couch beside her and put my hand on her shoulder. “Faye, you don’t want to take the rap for someone like that. My best advice is still to get out in front of his testimony. I know it’s difficult, but we need to start by being honest with your husband.” She had been crying softly into a handkerchief in her hands, but that snapped her head up.
“Faye, you know it’s true. John needs to hear it from you.” As she started to nod, I was already reaching for the phone and my note pad.
“Mr. Moisuk, it’s Woody Stone. I’m at your apartment talking with your wife. Can you come home?” Twenty minutes later, John Moisuk pushed open the eight-foot front door. I met him in the hallway and pointed towards the living room.
“Your wife’s in there. She wants to talk to you. I’ll wait here.” In a surprisingly short time, John walked back into the hall and thanked me.
“If you’ll let yourself out, I’ll be in touch with your office.” He was steady, a different man.
“Mr. Moisuk, you should take her on over to the substation. File charges of conspiracy to commit murder against Tomski based on her statement. Let me know if you need a witness to her admission.”
“I’ve already told her that’s my intention. She seems wrung-out tired of it all and wants to get it off her chest.”
As I pulled open the massive front door, I heard John back in the living room.
“Come along, Faye. I’ll help you pack.” All too sad, but easy money.
On the way back to the office, I swung by Mel’s Texaco on Division Avenue and pulled up to the high-test pump. Dupree Davis stood up from a metal lawn chair and left his sliver of shade. He waved and yelled out.
“Howdy, Mr. Stone!” He then walked over and squatted with his hand on the door, “How’s it hangin, Woody?”
“Hey, bo. Give’er all the go-juice she wants, then I need to talk to you.” While Dupree started monkeying beneath my left tail fin, I walked over and dropped a nickel in the Coke machine. It was an older model where the top lifted up. There, the bottles hung by their necks on frosty rails.
On muggy Mississippi Valley nights, my brother, Ronnie, and I used to sneak over to Mollet’s Conoco Station. He closed at eight p.m. during the week. He had a machine like that; all we needed was a bottle opener and a couple a’ straws to gorge ourselves like ticks. No Orange Nehi was safe with the Stone boys on the prowl. One night, Ol Man Mollet flipped on the light switch and came out swinging a tire iron to run us off. Ronnie said we’d better knock that shit off.
Dupree sidled over and I handed him a cold soda pop. “She took 12 gallons of the good stuff, Woody. Three eighty-five. I gotcher windshield.”
I put a fin in his hand. “Say, Dupree, I found a note on my alley door yesterday morning. Know anything about that?”
“Sho do. It got left just before midnight on Monday.”
“Didja see who left it?”
“I did, but I don’t know who it was. I was up on the roof having a nightcap when I heard a car in the alley.” ‘How the hell did he get up on the roof’?
“I couldn’t see too good, but it was the biggest brutha I ever saw. I mean that nigga was seven feet tall. I didn’t think too much of it. I thought that’s your business.” Big Nig Vecchio, working for Crazy Joe it seemed.
“Yeah, it is, but it might be nasty business. Wiseguy thinks he’s got my nuts in a vice. I might have to come out blazin to convince him otherwise. Didju see Gary Cooper in ‘High Noon’?”
Dupree chuckled, “Sho did...”
“Well, it’s about quarter to twelve. You willing to do a favor for a Korea vet, a favor you’ll have to immediately forget about? There’s a double sawbuck in it for you.
“Shoot! For twenty dollars, I GOT no memory.”
“Thanks, Dupree, I’ll let you know. Don’t work too hard.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Back at the office, Gina was filing her nails to the beat of ‘Flying Purple People
Eater’. She told me she found my note and walked down to make the bank deposit. Then, she told me how to spell ‘deposit’. I poured a cup of java and told her the Moisuk File was closed pending final payment.
“If you don’t hear from him by Friday afternoon, call and tell him you have his final statement for two-fifty.”
“Shu-wa. You caught the business pahtna?” She was making a note.
“I doubt he’ll be mishandling the merchandise again.” I winked at her, took my cup to my office and topped it off from the bottle on the bookshelf. I lit a pill and sat down to study my brick wall. I got up and opened the window to see it better - nervous energy.
Apparently, Joey Gallo, compared to Vito Rossi, was City Hall’s darling. He left less of a mess plying his murderous trade than Rossi did. What a load of crap. At that point the grease ball knew I had something on him, so he gave me an ultimatum - get on his payroll or get dead. Neither was going to happen.
Gina and I locked the office and walked up the street to the Bridge Deli for lunch. She turned heads everywhere she went, and I’m talking about the walk-into-a-lamppost kind of turning heads!
About two o’clock, I drove over to see Rita Mae Riley about the Coroner’s Report on Fitzpatrick. I knew Gallo had bumped him off regardless of the suicide set-up, and I was looking for anything to gain traction in a case against Gallo.
Rita Mae told me the Coroner hadn’t written up his autopsy report yet. I knew that obvious suicides were low priority on the paperwork side.
The Chief Medical Examiner’s Office was in a 10-story building at 520 1st Avenue just north of Bellevue. The City Morgue was in the basement and the quickest way in was off the narrow street out back, past the loading docks for inbound and outbound stiffs. I made my way down the chilly, sterile tile hallway to Doc Whittaker’s office.
***
Doc Whit had been an Army surgeon in World War II. Rumor had it liquor robbed him of his trade after he came back from Europe. That’s rough - motivated to take a civil service job by lack of options. He was pushing 50, but didn’t wear it well. When he shut his eyes, he didn’t look real life-like. His somber face told the world nothing, but the Irish twinkle in his blue eyes hinted at his dry sense of humor.
The Case Of The Little Italy Bounce (Woody Stone, Private Investigator Book 1) Page 20